5.  The applicant, who was born on 28 March 1943 in Trieste, was abandoned by her mother at birth.
6.  Her birth certificate records the following information:
“Today, 28 March 1943, at 7.30 a.m., a woman, who did not consent to being named, gave birth to a baby girl.”
7.  The applicant was placed first in an orphanage and subsequently with the Godelli family. When she was six years old she was adopted by Mr and Mrs Godelli under the simple adoption (affiliazione) procedure, by a decision of the Trieste Guardianship Judge of 10 October 1949.
8.  At the age of ten, after learning that she had been adopted, the applicant asked her adoptive parents to tell her who her birth parents were, but did not receive an answer. On an unspecified date she discovered that a young girl living in her village, who had been born on the same day as her, had been abandoned and subsequently adopted by another family under the simple adoption procedure. The applicant suspected that she was her twin sister. The adoptive parents of the two girls prohibited any contact between them.
9.  The applicant stated that she had had a very difficult childhood because she had been unable to find out her origins.
10.  In 2006 the applicant requested information about her origins from the Trieste Register Office, in accordance with section 28 of Law no. 184 of 4 May 1983 (Adoption Act: “Law no. 184/1993”), the regulations governing simple adoption having been repealed by that Law. The Register Office gave the applicant her birth certificate, on which her birth mother’s name did not appear because she had not agreed to have her identity disclosed.
11.  On 19 March 2007 the applicant lodged an application with the Trieste City Court, under Article 96 of Presidential Decree no. 396/2000, seeking rectification of her birth certificate. On 4 May 2007 the court declined jurisdiction and dismissed the application on the ground that section 28(5) of Law no. 184/1983 provided that where persons aged over twenty-five were seeking access to information about their birth parents the court with the appropriate jurisdiction was the Family Court.
12.  On 5 June 2007 the applicant lodged an application with the Trieste Family Court. On 11 June 2008 the court dismissed her application on the ground that, under section 28(7) of Law no. 184/983, she was prohibited from gaining access to information about her origins because her mother, at the time of the applicant’s birth, had not agreed to have her identity disclosed.
13.  The applicant appealed to the Court of Appeal, which dismissed her appeal by a decision of 23 December 2008.
14.  The court observed, in particular, that the Family Court had stressed the fact that the applicant’s birth mother had requested to keep her identity secret and that it had therefore correctly applied section 28(7) of Law no. 184 of 1983, even though the applicant had been adopted under a simple adoption order, as simple adoption did nevertheless create a family status. The Court of Appeal found that section 28(7) was designed to guarantee respect for the mother’s wishes. The prohibition on allowing the applicant access to information about her origins also served a public interest.
15.  The applicant did not lodge an appeal on points of law.